This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
The person with a secular mentality feels himself to be the center of the universe. Yet he is likely to suffer from a sense of meaninglessness and insignificance because he knows he’s but one human among five billion others - all feeling themselves to be the center of things - scratching out an existence on the surface of a medium-sized planet circling a small star among countless stars in a galaxy lost among countless galaxies. The person with the sacred mentality, on the other hand, does not feel herself to be the center of the universe. She considers the Center to be elsewhere and other. Yet she is unlikely to feel lost or insignificant precisely because she draws her significance and meaning from her relationship, her connection, with that center, that Other.
Existence | Insignificance | Meaning | Sacred | Sense |
Mao Tse-tung, alternatively Zedong, Ze dong, aka Chairman Mao
Wherever we happen to be, we must treasure our manpower and material resources, and must not take a short view and indulge in wastefulness and extravagance. Wherever we are, from the very first year of our work we must bear in mind the many years to come, the protracted war that must be maintained, the counter-offensive, and the work of reconstruction after the enemy's expulsion. On the one hand, never be wasteful or extravagant; on the other, actively expand production. Previously, in some places people suffered a great deal because they did not take the long view and neglected economy in manpower and material resources and the expansion of production. The lesson is there and attention must be called to it.
Martin Tupper, fully Martin Farquhar Tupper
Look too on this poor planet of ours, Torn by the storms of mysterious powers, Evil contending with good from its birth, Wrenching in battle the heartstrings of earth,— Ah! what infinities circle us here, Strangeness and wonderment swathing the sphere!
Martin Seligman, Martin E. P. "Marty" Seligman
Money, amazingly, is losing its power... Our economy is rapidly changing from a money economy to a satisfaction economy.
Money |
Mitch Albom, fully Mitchell David "Mitch" Albom
People are only mean when they're threatened, and that's what our culture does. That's what our economy does.
Culture |
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
The stock market and economy are two different things.
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
The U.S. economy is capable of very good growth provided the government keeps its hands off. Unfortunately, there’s a strong propensity for the government to do things that are harmful rather than helpful. For example, Sarbanes-Oxley [the post-Enron law attempting to curb accounting fraud] is very unfortunate. It tells every entrepreneur in America: Don’t take risks. That’s not what we want. The function of the entrepreneur is to take risks, and if he’s forced not to take risks and to spend on accountants rather than products, the economy is not going to expand or grow.
Good | Government | Growth | Law | Government |
Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
We are firmly convinced that the most imperfect republic is a thousand times better than the most enlightened monarchy. In a republic, there are at least brief periods when the people, while continually exploited, is not oppressed; in the monarchies, oppression is constant. The democratic regime also lifts the masses up gradually to participation in public life--something the monarchy never does. Nevertheless, while we prefer the republic, we must recognise and proclaim that whatever the form of government may be, so long as human society continues to be divided into different classes as a result of the hereditary inequality of occupations, of wealth, of education, and of rights, there will always be a class-restricted government and the inevitable exploitation of the majorities by the minorities. The State is nothing but this domination and this exploitation, well regulated and systematised.
Better | Government | Inequality | Inevitable | Nothing | Oppression | Public | Society | Will | Society | Government |
Inexperience is a quality of the human condition. We are born one time only; we can never start a new life equipped with the experience we've gained from a previous one. We leave childhood without knowing what youth is; we marry without knowing what it is to be married; and even when we enter old age, we don't know what it is we're heading for: The old are innocent children of their old age. In that sense, man's world is the planet of inexperience.
Childhood | Children | Experience | Knowing | Life | Life | Time | World | Youth | Youth | Old |
Economy is the basis of society. When the economy is stable, society develops. The ideal economy combines the spiritual and the material, and the best commodities to trade in are sincerity and love.
Finally, “industrial society,” to use a genteel euphemism for capitalism, has also become an easy explanation for the environmental ills that afflict our time. But a blissful ignorance clouds the fact that several centuries ago, much of England’s forest land, including Robin Hood’s legendary haunts, was deforested by the crude axes of rural proletarians to produce charcoal for a technologically simple metallurgical economy and to clear land for profitable sheep runs. This occurred long before the Industrial Revolution.
In this hidden world of cause-and-effect, the environmental movement and the public stand at a crossroads. Is growth a product of “consumerism” — the most socially acceptable and socially neutral explanation that we usually encounter in discussions of environmental deterioration? Or does growth occur because of the nature of production for a market economy? To a certain extent, we can say. both. But the overall reality of a market economy is that consumer demand for a new product rarely occurs spontaneously, nor is its consumption guided purely by personal considerations.
Murray D. Lincoln, fully Murray Danforth Lincoln
People believe that through the American way of life they can work together to encourage wider ownership of economic activities. In this way, they believe they can develop an economy of abundance which will provide a maximum of security and freedom.
To speak of 'limits to growth' under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many well-meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be 'persuaded' to limit growth than a human being can be 'persuaded' to stop breathing. Attempts to 'green' capitalism, to make it 'ecological', are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth.
Capitalism | Growth | Nature | System |
We have yet to determine how many people the planet can sustain without complete ecological disruption. The data are far from conclusive, but they are surely highly biased — generally along economic, racial, and social lines. Demography is far from a science, out it is a notorious political weapon whose abuse has disastrously claimed the lives of millions over the course of the century.
Perhaps the most obvious of our systemic problems is uncontrollable growth. I use the word “uncontrollable” advisedly, in preference to “uncontrolled.” The growth of which I speak is not humanity’s colonization of the planet over millennia of history. It is rather an inexorable material reality that is unique to our era: namely, that unlimited economic growth is assumed to be evidence of human progress. We have taken this notion so much for granted over the past few generations that it is as immutably fixed in our consciousness as the sanctity of property itself.
Consciousness | Evidence | Growth | Past | Preference | Problems | Property | Reality | Unique |
National Academy of Sciences NULL
Based on the strength of evidence from DNA comparisons, the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees lived approximately 6 to 7 million years ago in Africa. The evolutionary tree leading from this ancestral species to modern humans contains a number of side branches, representing populations and species that eventually went extinct. At various times in the past, the planet appears to have been populated by several human-like species.
Neil Armstrong, fully Neil Alden Armstrong
The important achievement of Apollo was demonstrating that humanity is not forever chained to this planet and our visions go rather further than that and our opportunities are unlimited.
Achievement | Humanity | Important |
Electric current, after passing into the earth travels to the diametrically opposite region of the same and rebounding from there, returns to its point of departure with virtually undiminished force. The outgoing and returning currents clash and form nodes and loops similar to those observable on a vibrating cord. To traverse the entire distance of about twenty-five thousand miles, equal to the circumference of the globe, the current requires a certain time interval, which I have approximately ascertained. In yielding this knowledge, nature has revealed one of its most precious secrets, of inestimable consequence to man. So astounding are the facts in this connection, that it would seem as though the Creator, himself, had electrically designed this planet just for the purpose of enabling us to achieve wonders which, before my discovery, could not have been conceived by the wildest imagination.